Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat

After losing her friend to a long battle with cancer, and being away from the spotlight for nearly four years, singer/songwriter Amanda Palmer has decided to officially released a new full band production song titled “Machete”. According to BrooklynVegan, Palmer is accompanied by long time collaborative friend Jherek Bischoff, who plays bass as well as the string arrangements, while drummer Ben Folds leads on the percussion end and Ryan Lerman leads on guitars. The new track is a six-minute. choppy, intense song that veers from vaudevillian fury to personal, quite moments that grip the listeners and take them through a journey of Palmer’s recent existence.

Amanda Palmer has been quite busy over the last few years since her recording of “Theatre is Evil” in 2012, since then she has been pulled into plenty of off-road opportunities: she has had a Kickstarter (which landed her nearly 25 thousand supporters and nearly 1.2 million dollars), which led her to land a spot on the popular TED talk discussing about her Kickstarter experience, she wrote a book, got pregnant and had a baby. Over the years Palmer also spent her time by her close friend Anthony’s side, who had been in a long battle with leukemia which he sadly lost, leading to the inspiration for her new track. During an interview with Stereogum Palmer expressed her feelings about her friend, sharing with the magazine “He was 24 years my elder and moved next door when I was nine; he served as my spiritual mentor, the one who taught me yoga, compassion, Fugazi and John Lennon….when he died this summer, I knew there was a song in there somewhere. And there was; it emerged about five months after he died and two months after I gave birth to me and Neil’s son (we named him Anthony).”

Over the years she has quietly been gathering a strong foundation of supporters to help her every in her music production, whether it is helping with funds or just moral support, her fans have been every step of the way. A month after her child was born, with the help of her friends, she got back into the studio. ” I recorded it about a month later with the loving encouragement of my friends (Ben Folds, who played drums, Jherek Bischoff, who played bass and did the stunning string arranging and conducting, and Ryan Lerman, who came in on guitar at the recommendation of Ben).”

After a couple of days of recording in Los Angeles, it was made! Releasing it through Stereogum and introducing the new track to the world. She also still allows people to sign up to her site in order to see how the process of the song was done.